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Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Web-series "First Day," funded entirely by Kmart, may seem like a typical show for teenage girls. But the cast competes with the wardrobe--all of it from the big-box store--for top billing. WSJ's Sam Schechner reports from Burbank.

Blog Editor Notes: "Harry's Law" has been retrofitted to appeal to 18 to 44 year olds despite being the network's top rated series, and taking its time slot in overall ratings. Why? To appeal to the demographic that spends money on things advertisers want to push. In addition expect increased appearances by Dell instead of Apple computers, Pepsi instead of Coke and other products that spend big bucks on product placement to be seen by the "younger" generation. Among the potential loss are in depth stories that are more social and less action oriented, story lines that reflect the poor or elderly, and the stronger character development audiences 35 and up demand. The trend started in motion pictures, with attendance of an average age of 23, then spread to television and is now dominating the world of web produced webisodes...as this Wall Street Journal story explores...

During the July filming for "First Day," a comedy series for teenage girls, a woman with a spreadsheet and a red pen sat in a director's chair carefully checking off boxes.

Her job: to make sure Kmart products were being used. As the cameras rolled, she noted the exact items, such as a particular style of cargo pants, that the retailer had included in "look" sheets for each character.

Kmart had good reason to expect such control over the six-episode series, which is running on Facebook and other websites this month. The retailer is picking up the bill of more than $600,000 for the program, and approved everything from story lines to wardrobes to names of characters.

The digital revolution is blurring the lines between traditional television shows and Internet video by changing how programs are delivered to consumers. It's also changing how shows are made and who makes them. Movie-streaming company Netflix Inc. is about to produce its first original show. Google Inc.'s YouTube is readying a slate of channels to host programs, according to people familiar with the matter. A new talk show hosted by Diablo Cody that began as a home video posted on YouTube is now being sponsored by Lexus.

Web shows like "First Day" could provide a template for TV's future that harkens back to the era when advertisers not only sponsored but helped to create, cast and script "soap operas" and variety shows.

"We're all going back to the dawn of television," said Evan Shapiro, president of AMC Networks Inc.'s IFC and Sundance Channel. "Especially online, we are seeing remnants of the early days of television where brands are way more involved in production."

The change matters for viewers. Advertisers could end up calling more of the shots—from what kind of characters get on the air to the types of stories that get told. Some advertisers might be reluctant to put their names on or spend big bucks for edgy fare like "Breaking Bad," in which a high-school chemistry teacher begins cooking meth.

'Breaking Bad' used the traditional approach in which a network creates content and advertisers buy spots.

The advent of advertiser-produced shows comes at a tumultuous time for the television industry. Audiences for the average TV program are shrinking, as viewers find alternate ways to watch video, such as on devices like iPads and computers through streaming sites such as Hulu LLC. That threatens tens of billions of dollars in advertising. Meanwhile it remains unclear whether a new generation of viewers will subscribe to cable TV in the same numbers as their parents. That threatens tens of billions of subscription dollars.

Those challenges are making some TV networks more open to advertiser-created content. "There is pressure on the networks to fill their shelves," said Robert Friedman, a former MTV executive who is president of media and entertainment at Radical Media, which is majority owned by Bertelsmann AG-controlled FreemantleMedia. "If these types of shows work, they're going to be a big part of the schedule in the future."

Companies like Radical, Los Angeles-based Generate and WPP Group PLC's GroupM have been pushing advertiser-produced shows for some time. But advertisers have been wary of the big costs. Nor do they want to produce a flop. "In the Motherhood," a successful Web series from Unilever PLC and Sprint Nextel Corp., made the leap to Walt Disney Co.'s ABC in 2009 and was canceled within three months.

Still, more advertisers are jumping in. More than a half dozen have spearheaded new or recent shows, including General Motors Co., Sony Corp. and Intel Corp. Overall, advertisers are projected to spend $3.1 billion on Web-video ads and sponsored programming in 2011, up 43% from 2010, according to eMarketer.

Advertising-funded programs dominated TV in the 1940s, when television was still an unproven medium. But by the mid-1950s, TV's audience was booming. Advertisers were becoming wary of the cost to make a single show. The few national networks, meanwhile, realized they had a very scarce resource with their airtime. And they increasingly opted to make their own shows, selling commercial spots to multiple advertisers.

For the most part, the traditional model for making TV shows hasn't changed in decades. Writers begin pitching ideas to TV networks and studios in the summer. TV executives decide which scripts they like. They eventually select a few dozen to make into full-blown test episodes, called pilots, paying millions of dollars each to do so. Generally, it's not until then that TV networks start approaching advertisers to sell commercials and more elaborate product placements.

Sam Schechner on Lunch Break looks at how Budweiser is transforming itself from television advertiser to content producer, another example of how the digital revolution is changing how shows are made and who makes them.

The new model reverses the process. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV's Budweiser unit this summer began working with Radical to shoot its own reality-competition show called "The Big Time"—without locking in a TV network to air it.

Each of the seven 44-minute episodes is costing between $300,000 and $500,000 to produce, according to people familiar with the project. But the company has had discussions with TV networks about running the show for free, and it plans to run it online.

Kmart paid for 'First Day,' a comedy series for teenage girls, to spur sales of clothing and other products.

Contestants in the show compete for a chance to live out a dream, such as pitching major-league baseball or running a restaurant. "It flips the model to content that people seek out and stay connected to for longer than a traditional spot," said Jorge Inda Meza, Budweiser's global director of marketing.

By funding a program, advertisers get a much deeper level of control over the content than they traditionally have had.

For Kmart, a unit of Sears Holdings Corp., "First Day," began as a four-page pitch in 2009 from "Gossip Girl" executive producer Alloy Entertainment. For the current season, the show's second, Alloy pitched a story about a girl who wants to go to the prom with her crush. The retailer liked the idea, but wanted to use it to hawk its line of back-to-school clothes. So it suggested changing the focus to a fall dance, rather than a prom.

In rounds of back-and-forth story development, Kmart also asked Alloy to shape each of the four main characters to reflect several clothing brands that Kmart wanted to push. The protagonist, for instance, was written to embody the Dream Out Loud by Selena Gomezbrand. Kmart also pushed Alloy to change the protagonist's original name, Bree, to which it thought its customers wouldn't relate. They settled on the name Rosie instead.

The retailer wouldn't tolerate bad language. In an early draft of the script, one character described a protein shake as tasting "like grass without the G and the R"; the reference was cut.

"There was a lot of work we did around language, and trying to make sure we spoke in a teen's language, but also that there was no swearing, no sex," said Andrew Stein, vice president of marketing for Sears Holdings.

Advertisers have generally been less willing to spend at the same levels as traditional TV producers. An hour-long episode of a broadcast network drama usually costs well over $3 million to produce. These costs have been rising as networks try to outdo one another with special effects and big-name stars.

But an hour of airtime for even an expensive scripted Web show from an advertiser can cost well under $1 million to create, producers say.

The first season of "First Day," where the episodes last just five to eight minutes, cost between $600,000 and $800,000 to make, according to people familiar with the budget, and racked up approximately eight million views across its eight episodes. For that same amount of money, an advertiser could buy only three or four 30-second ads in CBS Corp.'s "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which averaged 14 million viewers per episode last TV season, according to estimates of prices compiled by Nielsen.

"First Day" was designed to shoot cheaply. In it, the main character is forced to relive the same day repeatedly, as in the Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day." The shoot had a smaller crew, fewer extras, smaller salaries and no trailers for its actors. The food table for cast and crew offered cheese balls and other goods purchased in part with Kmart gift cards. The plot made it easier to save time by doing more "block shooting"—getting every scene in a single location at once. Every iteration of a climactic scene at a fall dance was squeezed into one day's shooting in a high-school gym.

Reality shows are even cheaper. Short online episodes of Bravo's cooking-competition program "Top Chef" will air later this fall on the website for Comcast Corp.'s Bravo channel, BravoTV.com, as well as Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon and can be streamed over mobile phones and tablets. According to people familiar with the matter, those episodes cost roughly $50,000 each to produce as part of a sponsorship by Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. That's a fraction of the $500,000 to $1 million that an episode of reality television like "Top Chef" can cost, according to people familiar with the program. Toyota and Bravo declined to comment on specific financials related to the deal.

One way they save is by moving quickly. A full-length on-air episode of "Top Chef" takes about two days to shoot and runs about an hour with commercials; Toyota's five- to seven-minute web episodes were filmed in just 45 minutes.

"We are always looking for ways to create a positive recall of our brand," said Dionne Colvin, national marketing media manager for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. "We've found the best way to do that is being involved early on in the production."

Some advertisers and ad buyers say they're looking to make shows because of the rising prices for conventional TV commercials. The average prices to reach 1,000 people between 18- and 49-years-old are up more than 10% over last year for "upfront" ads sold in advance for prime-time shows on several major broadcast and cable networks, according to ad buyers and network executives.

The prices are going up because advertisers continue to spend, even as the number tuning into TV shows goes down. The number of adults under 50 watching traditional TV, live or recorded, at any given time of day this television season was down 2.4% from two years ago, according to Nielsen. At the same time, digital-video recorders are lessening the impact of commercials, with roughly half of some spots skipped when viewers watch a previously aired show.

"Advertisers clearly have to do something," said Ben Silverman, a former producer and NBC executive who now runs InterActive Corp.'s Electus multimedia studio, which has made Web-video series for clients including Mars Inc.'s Orbit gum brand. "Spot advertising is not having the same relative impact, and it's still super expensive."

But giving advertisers more control of shows could force writers and creators to sand down the rough edges on their shows, or avoid controversial themes. "Good drama and good comedy come from conflict, and brands can be conflict-averse," said Josh Bank, East Coast president of Alloy Entertainment, the maker of the Kmart show. "That's the cool puzzle of this side of the business. How can we make very large brands happy and maintain the creative integrity of our show?"

In "First Day," Kmart said it worked to keep its involvement subtle. Characters don't mention its name. In the first season, the retailer nixed an idea for the main character to skip school to shop at Kmart because it seemed forced.

"Our goal here is to be real and authentic, and to embed our brands into the storyline," said Kmart's Mr. Stein.

About Me

Actor, Casting Director, Director, Broadcaster, Writer, Singer, Artistic
Director, Dramatur, Producer, Professor, Coach, Husband, Grandfather, Marketing
Professional and life long student Art Lynch joined the staff of John Robert
Powers in 1999. Lynch is also an adjunct professor at the Community College of
Southern Nevada, the Morning Edition Weekend Host for Nevada Public Radio and
one of 67 individuals who represent 126,000 actors as a member of the Board of
Directors of the Screen Actors Guild. He is the past president of the Nevada
Branch of the Screen Actors Guild and of the Professional Audio/Visual Communications
Association. A resident of Nevada since 1984, Lynch has an MA in Communications
from UNLV and a BA in Theater, Speech and Mass Communications from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently pursuing post-graduate studies
in theater, education and the entertainment industry. Art Lynch studied and
practiced the craft of acting in Chicago and California before settling in
Nevada. With his wife Laura, Art owned and operated a successful marketing
company with national clientele. Art was personally responsible for casting and
directing over 1,000 commercials and industrials, as well as assisting on film
and television projects in many ways. His career also includes earning awards
as a wire service, magazine and broadcast journalist. He is most proud,
however, of his daughters. Ann is a PhD in neuroscience and Beth is the proud
mother of his grandchildren, Evan and Elijah.

Short Film Festival

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